PCH Cruising

"I'm not denyin' the women are foolish; God Almighty made 'em to match the men." -George Eliot

A weekend off? Calls for a roadtrip! Most of the weekend getaways that I take have absolutely no planning and I won’t decide on a place until about 2 days before. Which is exactly what happened this time. KT and I decided we wanted to get out of town for the weekend and that was literally all we knew. We looked into Big Bear Lake, Lake Arrowhead, Santa Cruz, anywhere we could get to within 4-5 hours, we looked at. Even though I’ve been in Los Angeles for almost 3 years now, I still hadn’t taken the trip all the way up Highway 1. When my Mom and Tanner came to visit a couple of years ago, we went up as far as San Simeon. Since we were leaving on a Friday night, we decided to drive all the up to Monterey that night and start our trip down on Saturday. It was only about a 4 and a half hour drive, which isn’t bad BUT for about the last 2 hours, it rained. So we could only hope it was going to clear up by morning. We got to our hotel around 1am and we stayed at Lighthouse Lodge and Cottages. Super cute small hotel and really close to the water. Although we didn’t spend much time on those grounds, I was still happy with it. That morning we got dressed and went to Cannery Row. Cannery Row is like a waterfront downtown area in Monterey. There’s a bunch of restaurants, souvenir shops, coffee shops and the Monterey Aquarium. We didn’t spend too much time down there since we had a lot of ground that we wanted to cover that day. But we walked around for a bit, checked out a bunch of the local shops and even made time to enjoy a glass of wine from Carmel Ridge Wines. The beach area is small and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend “hanging out” on the beach there. Not far from Cannery Row is Lovers Point Beach where there’s more people playing in the water, some paddle boarders, and a more hangout kind of vibe. The beaches in Northern California are just completely different than the beaches in Southern California and there really isn’t any comparison. Personally I wouldn’t ever plan to go to NorCal and sit on a beach, I’d stick around SoCal for that.

From here, we went to Pebble Beach. Pebble Beach is extremely unique, as it just kind of looks like a resort and is known for its golf course. It’s not really a town, just a small area where there’s a couple restaurants, shops, and of course, the golf course. We ate at Stillwater Bar and Grill and had some DELICIOUS oysters and a couple of crab dishes. The view we had was incredible. California had a pretty rainy winter this last season, so everything was SO GREEN. I would say this is the biggest difference in the NorCal and SoCal coastlines. There are so many more trees along the NorCal coastline. Our next stop was Carmel by the Sea. We didn’t get to do much exploring here, mainly because we wanted to drive down Highway 1 before the sunset. However, we found a place to stop and grab a quick coffee. Carmel by the Sea seemed to be a really cute town with a bunch of local shops and things along the Main Street.

Now we started the part of the trip I was most excited about- the drive. To get from Carmel to Morro Bay, which is where Highway 1 starts its way back inland, takes about 2 and a half to 3 hours. Obviously, it varies depending on traffic and how many times you stop along the way. We started the drive around 4ish so the sun was hitting the mountains and over the water and it is absolutely breathtaking. It truly saddens me that some people go their entire lives without seeing how beautiful this planet really is. If you ever get the opportunity to drive Highway 1, TAKE IT! I’m telling you, there’s not a chance in hell you’ll regret it. The road winds with where the mountains meet the ocean, and it is such a fun drive. The car in front of us had a guy in the back seat and he was having the TIME OF HIS LIFE and I could just tell by the way he was dancing and moving his arms out of the window and he was such a joy to watch. We laughed at him the entire time and at one point we even said we were glad to be following behind them. Until he decided to spit a massive spitball out of his window… then we were not so happy about it. A girl in the car hung out of the sunroof for a little bit of the way. There is something about that drive that allows people to escape reality (probably because there isn’t any cell phone service) and “live their best lives” along that coastline. Once you get down into San Simeon, the road flattens out and straightens up a bit. Some people would be happy to know, this is where you’ll regain cell service ;) San Simeon is known for Hearst Castle. We didn’t get to stop there on this trip, but when my mom and Tanner came a while back we visited and it is BEAUTIFUL! The history of the castle is unique and this is a point of interest that I recommend! They also have a beach where a bunch of seals and elephant seals will beach themselves. The elephant seals weren’t there this time and I’m assuming that was due to some kind of migration, but there were still tons of seals on the shore. By the time we got to Morro Bay, it was just when the sun was setting. We pulled into a beach and sat in the car until it actually started to set since it was pretty cold and windy, but we did get out and frolic around the beach for a minute. On the second night we stayed at The Apple Farm Inn in San Luis Obispo. It was a small little boutique hotel that had its own restaurant on the grounds. Since we had a long day and were both pretty wiped out, we ate there and just went to sleep. Nothing too exciting but we had an exciting day and anything would’ve been hard to top it.

The next morning we went to Downtown SLO and grabbed a smoothie from Bliss Cafe. While we were waiting on our smoothies KT found a winery nearby that offered horseback riding through the vineyards. We couldn’t schedule a ride until a little later in the evening so we walked around Higeura St. to kill some time. We stopped in a couple of shops there and they actually had some corporate retail stores like Sephora, Sunglass Hut, Express, etc. Cass WInery was in Paso Robles, which was about a 30 minute drive from SLO. Once we got there, there were only about 6 riders in our group. Our guide was super nice and informative and all of the horses were beautiful. A couple of the horses were rescued from the wildfires that happened over the last few years, so there were a couple of different kinds. The ride took us all around the vineyard and through a dried up riverbed. Like I said earlier, it’s been a rainy winter for California and the river was flowing the week before our trip. Before that it had been 8+ years since the river held any water. The ride was about an hour long and came with a wine tasting after it was over. There was a restaurant at the winery too so we got to have lunch along with our tasting. Once we finished up at the winery, we got back on the road and stopped at the Pismo Beach outlet mall. I, of course, felt the need to treat myself and it was an outlet mall so better there than anywhere else, right? We only went in to a couple of stores and were done much quicker than we thought we were going to be. We tried to catch the sunset in Santa Barbara but as soon as we got there, the sun had already gone down. It was a quick but MUCH needed weekend getaway. It got me really excited for summer because when the weather warms up I’ll get the urge for short trips more often! The coastline along Highway 1 is beautiful year round, so if you get the chance to go at any time, GO!

xoxo

charli